Getting ready for tomorrow, I was reminded of the great Sonny Curtis. Here he is doing a version of his song I Fought the Law, which kind of sums up my life: an iconoclast who lost.

He also wrote and sang the theme song to The Mary Tyler Moore Show and wrote Leo Sayer’s hit More Than I Can Say.

In an update for a post earlier today, I noted that Jim Naureckas tweeted, “If only an armed guard could be placed next to every state trooper.” Well, it has become a thing. David Frum has now similarly tweeted 14 times.

First, dental clinics:

We need a federal agent at every dental clinic abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?sec…

— davidfrum (@davidfrum) December 22, 2012

Later, strip clubs:

We need a federal agent at every strip club wdrb.com/story/20372337…

— davidfrum (@davidfrum) December 22, 2012

And most recently, muffler shops:

We need a federal agent at every muffler shop topix.com/forum/philly/T…

— davidfrum (@davidfrum) December 22, 2012

He’s now up to 22 in the time it took me to embed those tweets. The point should be clear, just as I discussed in, NRA Calls for Militarizing Schools. There is no end to this. Gun violence is everywhere in America. The NRA call for protection for our children is really just a call for having a cop in every home. David Frum is being so reasonable these days, he may have to change parties. (Just kidding. He was defending Robert Bork earlier today.)

Update (22 December 2012 3:54 pm)

In the end, David Frum did a total of 32 tweets. He has collected them all in one place, ‘We Need a Federal Agent’.

Jonathan Bernstein at The Plum Line blog encourages us, Don’t Worry Too Much About John Kerry’s Senate Seat. I not exactly worried about this, but I have been opposed to it. Of course, that was when Kerry was going to be moving to the Pentagon. Moving to State seems like a better deal, but I still think it is a questionable idea.

Bernstein argues mostly that Scott Brown isn’t that big a threat. First, he says that Brown is not the favorite to win the special election next summer. But as reported yesterday by his own paper, Scott Brown Would Win Special Election Today. That’s just a poll nine months out, of course. But exit polling of the 6 November election showed that the people still liked Brown by a lot; they just liked Warren more. So Brown has at least a decent chance to take Kerry’s seat.

Bernstein says not to worry because the seat comes up for re-election in 2014. So the Democrats would have a second chance to defeat Brown. This strikes me as a very weak argument. If Brown wins the special election, he will almost certainly win the off-year election.

There is one issue that Bernstein brings up that I think is strong: Kerry is almost 70. He may not run for re-election in 2014 anyway. That’s an excellent point. It is also the case that the Democrats are prepared for a fight in this upcoming election in a way that they were not after Kennedy died. But I’m concerned about this nomination for another reason.

Obama shows an amazing lack of strategic thinking. We see this in the Fiscal Cliff negotiations where he wanted to include a two year extension of the debt ceiling. In this case, he seems to have forgotten that in 2014 there will be 20 Democrats to only 13 Republicans up for re-election in the Senate. Losing Kerry’s seat might not be a big deal now, but it could be the difference between a Democratic and Republican majority at the start of 2015.

So I’m still not convinced that Kerry’s move is good for the Democrats. But I like the idea of him at State. That would be good for America. But I’m not sure it would be enough to make up for the harm that Scott Brown would do in the Senate.

In his farewell address to the Senate, Jim DeMint said, “If we can win the hearts and minds of the American people with these ideas, I know we can engage and enlist them to convince all of you here to set the politics aside, the parties aside, and to adopt those ideas that work.” It has a certain charm to it: let’s put politics and parties aside and all agree to be Republicans. This is kind of at the heart of the Republican Party: the religious belief that they have good ideas. But as I’ve written before, other than tax cuts for the rich, destroying the social safety net, and an intense desire for power as power, they have no actual ideas. And regardless, they never test their ideas. They don’t mean to shrink the size of government because it will be good for the country; the want a smaller government because they believe in a smaller government.

Jamelle Bouie reports at The Plum Line blog, GOP Elevates Reactionary Tim Scott to South Carolina Senate Seat. How reactionary? He has the usual Republi-Crazy positions: climate change denier, deep water oil drilling proponent, stem cell research opponent. But in addition, he proposed a bill that would deny assistance to any family that had a member who went on strike. And he wanted to impeach Obama for the debt ceiling.

Bouie notes, “It should be said that for all of the real problems the GOP has with diversity in terms of its organization and its candidate pool, the party does an excellent job of elevating the minorities that do find themselves in its tent.” Of course, that is just a symptom of their fundamental racial problem. Rather than court minority groups with policy, they instead elevate those few minorities in their coalition. Frankly, I don’t think that Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio are really ready for prime-time national politics. Neither would have risen so fast in the Democratic Party.

The same is at least as true of Tim Scott, who is an African American. He has only been in the House for one term. But more to the point, he is yet another example of the Republican Party trying to change its brand without changing its policies. Michael P. Jeffries writes in The Atlantic, “Scott’s policy positions prove him just as tone-deaf to the modern political world as his most conservative GOP colleagues. That makes him one of them at the same time he’s a useful foil. What he won’t be, however, is someone who helps the GOP win black and Hispanic voters.”

Jeffries goes on to talk about how it is that Scott is just a token in the Republican Party. Primarily, as with Herman Cain, he is a black man who completely reinforces the white power structure. And as a result, he wins by getting almost exclusively support from whites. But even more, he is only accepted in the party as long as he follows along. This makes me think of David Brock who explains in his book Blinded By the Right how he was accepted as a gay man as long as he was shilling for the conservative movement. The moment he strayed even a little, he saw what he had always been to them: a useful tool.

So the Republican Party continues to look for ways to not change. The appointment of Tim Scott is an excellent example of this doomed effort.